Mika Brzezinski used an unfortunate metaphor on today’s Morning Joe to describe Hillary and Trump’s different approaches to preparing for Monday’s first presidential debate. Said Mika: “you think of like the two law students preparing for the bar. The guy is polishing his car to calm down. And the girl is studying up to the last minute.”

Mika is apparently unaware that Hillary flunked the DC bar exam after graduating from Yale law school in 1973. 67% of the people taking the exam at the same time passed, putting Hillary in the bottom third. Maybe instead of studying, she was too busy . . . polishing Bill’s car.

Yesterday, having a friendly argument with a good friend, he explained his support for Hillary partly in terms of the fact that she’s “incredibly intelligent.” Really? As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, just how smart, really, is The Smartest Woman in the World?

Note: Mika employs a gender stereotype that would get most male pundits into hot water. And for good measure she refers to the woman taking the bar exam as a “girl.” Paging Gloria Steinem!

DONNY DEUTSCH: What Hillary has got to do is on the one hand, I think, prosecute, moderate, rope-a-dope, and then Google. Let me talk about what I mean there. In terms of, basically, she has to have a very measured tone. She can’t come out at him. She’s got to poke, poke, poke, hope that in some way he punches back.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I will just say before we laugh about him doing rallies and not preparing, you think of like the two law students preparing for the bar. The guy is like polishing his car to calm down and the girl is studying up to the last minute. And that’s what, it’s just different ways of —

In her defense of her relationship with the Clinton Foundation while she was SoS, she claimed there was no unethical or improper conduct. She doesn’t understand that an office-holder can’t even present the appearance of impropriety.

True, but pursuing that line of argument means conceding her point, that there was no actual impropriety, and I suspect that’s what she wants to achieve. She wants to turn a case of outright quid-pro-quo bribery into one of failure to be careful enough about appearances. This seems to be her standard tactic every time her corruption becomes an issue; make a flawed excuse, so as to turn that into the issue.

At the time Hillary took it, the DC bar exam was considered to be one of the easier bar exams. Many wannabe lawyers who were planning to practice in nearby states would take the DC bar exam and then use their DC admission to waive in to the state bars, which allowed them to avoid taking the tougher bar exams in states like Virginia.

If she does have an earpiece, Trump’s ream has three options:
1. Do nothing, just challenge her on it and emabarass her on it live at the debate.
2. Jam it with an irritating signal to drive her nuts, or possibly trigger her “dehydration” attacks.
3. Override the signal and give her nonsense to parrot.

Same with Obama. In 2008 there were constant online “ads” about Obama’s genius level IQ (as compared to all the other presidents except Bubba who were deemed to be average or idiots). No proof. No grades or scores have leaked. We don’t even know what classes he took in college. Nobody even remembers seeing him at Columbia. You can’t use his speeches because he just reads them off the teleprompter. It’s not even clear that he writes them. When he strays off prompter, bad things happen or there’s just a lot of hemming and hawing. The IQ assessment just based on looks, I guess.

The smart money would say that Hillary’s not studying, she’s passed out in a drug-induced stupor.

partly in terms of the fact that she’s “incredibly intelligent.”

A strange fantasy. The Inevitable One doesn’t do or say anything notably intelligent. To the contrary, her claim re Gaddafy, “We came, we saw, he died,” may be the single stupidest thing any American politician ever said—and that includes Warren Harding.

In many years in science and engineering (yes, including “rocket science”) I’ve encountered a few unusually intelligent people. I’ve seen no indication that Hillary is one of them. Her Hubby shows signs of intelligence; too bad he never used it. (A life of crime and debauchery, even a successful one, doesn’t count in my book.) Hillary is more monomaniacal and driven than Bill, but nowhere near as intelligent. You could make a good argument that she’s always been the driving force behind the duo, with Bill just the front man. That doesn’t make her intelligent; it makes her a talented crime boss.